The scale and impact of fraud and theft within families has been overlooked according to the Financial Vulnerability Taskforce.
The Financial Vulnerability Taskforce and the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) have jointly launched the ‘Theft and fraud within families’ report which aims to address the lack of awareness and research on financial abuse by family members. This will help the profession in providing more effective advice, support, and measures to prevent this type of crime.
The Financial Vulnerability Taskforce launched earlier this year and is now a fully independent Community Interest Company (CIC) and has over 1,000 regulated firms that have adopted the Financial Vulnerability Charter.
Member of the Financial Vulnerability Taskforce and chair of the Safeguarding Adult National Network Professor Keith Brown says: “I have led the national research on behalf of the National Trading Standards Scams team for a number of years now and although it is clear that criminals are behind many frauds and scams and that this is an important message to get out into society, we appear to have overlooked the scale and impact of fraud and theft within families.
We hope that this critical APPG report will be a catalyst to change this position to one where we have a better understanding of the scale and impact of this crime on families, as the first step towards tackling ‘the elephant in the room’. Only then can we move forward together to ensure it is both prevented and responded to effectively.”
APPG chair MP Craig Tracey said: “This is a call to the entire financial services sector and the health and social care sector to look far more closely at the issue of theft and fraud within families. It is both a crime and also a safeguarding issue with a massive impact on wellbeing, that we as a society have a duty to better understand in order to protect the most vulnerable in our communities.”
The Financial Vulnerability Taskforce chair Keith Richards says: “We all face various vulnerable circumstances at different times in our lives, most often temporary, rather than permanent. Professional advisers are recognising an increasing occurrence of financial pressure being placed on clients with accumulated wealth by family members, which was particularly evident during the early stages of pension freedoms. Without knowing what the national picture is, however, we can only guess at the extent of the problem in our society, and the cost to us all. Being alert and recognising a potential issue is important but what an adviser does about it can be critical, so we are also underlining the need to collect and share examples of innovative and good practice currently being used to tackle this issue.”